“Our staff know what bedbugs look like and since Friday we’ve had staff there every day in different apartments, honestly trying to look for bedbugs. We have found not one bedbug,” she said.

On Tuesday, Ziad Zeina told CBC News through an interpreter that he wanted to get his family out of their two-bedroom apartment on Gerrish Street because the bedbug problem “is non-stop and it’s not going to change and there’s no solution at this moment.”

But Mills said one of the first steps workers take is to inquire with building managers whether the biting pests are a problem on site.

In the case of Harbour View Apartments where the Zeinas live, Mills said building managers took the preventive step of fumigating their unit even though it did not have bedbugs.

“You can actually tell because there’s still kind of an actual vague smell in them [apartments],” Mills said.